Trudy Rubin: France leads way on Syrian problems

BRUSSELS,
Belgium — France and Britain are pressing the European Union to end its embargo
on arms for the Syrian opposition, in the hope that they can encourage
President Obama to follow their lead.

French
and British leaders’ frustration with U.S. waffling on Syria was palpable in
Brussels last week. As the flood of refugees from Syria grew to tsunami levels,
threatening to destabilize much of the region, French President Francois
Hollande declared bluntly, “The biggest risk is inaction.”

Secretary
of State John Kerry said Washington won’t stand in the way of its allies’ moves
to arm the opposition, but the administration still refuses to provide
mainstream Syrian rebel groups with weapons — even as radical Islamists obtain
money and guns.

The
French make a convincing case that this position should be rethought.

“We
believe there will only be a way out when the military situation on the ground
changes,” said the French Foreign Ministry’s director of policy planning,
Justin Vaisse, at the Brussels Forum, an annual conference organized by the
German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Vaisse
said the current European Union embargo on arms for the rebels was backfiring.
Regime forces get weapons from Iran and Russia, while the moderate opposition
often lacks bullets. The regime can bomb and shell Syrian civilians with
impunity, with more than 70,000 Syrians dead so far.

“The
arms embargo is now backfiring,” Vaisse said emphatically. “The playing field
is not level. The opposition is fighting with hands tied behind back.”

U.S.
officials say, rightly, that the Syrian crisis can only be resolved by a
political solution, not a military one. Toward this end, Washington is still
hoping Moscow will pressure the regime to negotiate, and is still backing U.N.
efforts to broker talks.

France
and Britain also seek a negotiated solution. But, said Vaisse, negotiations
“will be taken up by Bashar Assad only when he has no other option. The
political process ... isn’t going anywhere, [because] the situation on the
ground isn’t conducive.”

He
is correct. The current military stalemate leads Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad to believe he can survive the fighting. On a recent visit to Moscow,
France’s Hollande tried unsuccessfully to persuade Russian President Vladimir
Putin to facilitate talks between opposition leaders and less-tainted officials
in the Syrian government. Putin’s lack of interest convinced the French that
Russia won’t play a positive role.

France
believes that if the allies provide ground-to-air weapons, known as MANPADS, to
vetted opposition commanders, it might break the stalemate.

This
brings us to the second major concern of the Obama administration: that
sophisticated weapons might wind up in the hands of radical Islamists. “That is
what has happened already,” British Prime Minister David Cameron pointed out
during a press conference in Brussels last recently. With the most money and
the best guns, Islamists are best positioned to capture such weapons from the
Syrian army, or to buy them on the black market.

The
CIA spent a year vetting non-Islamist opposition commanders and believed it
knew whom such weapons could be delivered to. So why not deliver MANPADS to
vetted commanders rather than wait for radical Islamists to get them?

And
wouldn’t it make far more sense to let the opposition create its own no-fly
zone by using MANPADS rather than — as some Republican and Democratic senators
now advocate — use U.S. bombers or troops?

At
the Brussels Forum, Louise Arbour, head of the International Crisis Group,
asked whether the French were prepared for the chance that Assad wouldn’t bend
despite their arming of the opposition. What would they do then?

That
question is valid. But the more pertinent question is: What will Washington do
if U.S. inaction results in a failed Syrian state penetrated by jihadis who
will get their hands on Assad’s weapons? France and Britain are willing to take
a risk to try to prevent this. But they can’t convince Assad (or Moscow) that
his days are numbered unless the United States helps them shift the balance on
the Syrian ground.

TRUDY RUBIN is a columnist and board member for the
Philadelphia Inquirer.

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